Downloadable Music: Freegal

The New City Library has discontinued its subscription to the Freegal music service.

There were a few reasons for this decision.

Freegal is a rather expensive product for the library to keep supporting given the number of patrons who actually used the service. We have noticed, over the last year, that usage levels have continued in a downward trend. Another reason for discontinuing Freegal is budgetary constraints we now find ourselves under. The cost, per download, for each song was quite high for the library. The third reason is simply a matter of the number of free streaming music services on the web which everyone has access to. Some of these are Pandora, last.fm, 8track.com and Spotify. There are many more streaming music services that patrons can get by going online.

Again, we are sorry to have to discontinue Freegal. We hope our patrons understand our reasons for doing so.